Mom's 'nagging text' gets dad to adjust 3-month-old son's car seat -- just minutes before crash
A Tennessee woman claims her “nagging text” for her husband to adjust their 3-month-old son’s car seat strap may have saved the child’s life.
Just minutes later, she says, her husband got into a traffic accident, slamming on the brakes with the child in the car while traveling at “nearly 50 miles per hour.”
Rebecca Tafaro Boyer posted her story to Facebook last year in a post that only recently has gone viral, shared more than 40,000 times. Boyer, who is a nurse at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, was back to work on her first day since taking maternity leave.
She asked her husband, David Boyer, to send her hourly updates about how their son William was handling his first day without his mom. David sent her a photo of the baby in his car seat, writing “Little man is out. We are running errands today.”
“That chest clip isn’t high enough or nearly tight enough,” the new mom quipped back, but she didn’t get a reply.
Fifteen minutes later she said she received a text that her husband had gotten into a car accident less than three miles away from her home. A driver pulled out in front of her husband, forcing him to slam on the brakes while traveling at high speeds.
“My precious little bundle of joy was so well restrained in his car seat, THAT HE DIDN’T EVEN WAKE UP,” Boyer wrote in the post. David said he adjusted the strap before pulling out of the driveway. He himself suffered a broken foot from the crash, but the baby was unharmed.
Boyer said “the reason my family is at home sitting on the couch with a pair of crutches instead of down at the hospital is because of my annoying nagging mom voice.” The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration reports that car accidents are the leading cause of death for children up to 13 years old.
Though car seats saved the lives of nearly 250 children in 2015, about 60 percent of car seats are not used correctly, the agency reported, according to the Washington Post. Boyer said her message for parents is to “take that extra 30 seconds every single time,” which can make a difference and “can save your child’s life.”